House: Rude Awakenings
by Kellygrishin
Summary: Yet again Dr. House is paged in the middle of the night. Some fool needed his expertise at the hospital and couldn't wait till morning. But strange things are happening. House realizes that something is horribly wrong with his reality.


**HOUSE**

**Rude Awakenings**

He was yanked out of a deep sleep, out of his only escape and back to reality. The silence of his empty house was broken by an insistent beeping coming from under his bed. He closed his eyes, attempting to block out the noise and drift back to sleep. But it was too late, his mind was racing, asking questions, telling him to get down to the hospital before it was too late for someone. For Doctor House was one of the best doctors Princeton-plainsboro Teaching Hospital had. It wasn't just a job to him, it was a passion.

Without bothering to turn on a light, Gregory House rolled out of bed and grabbed some clothes off the floor. Then he got down on the dusty floor and groped around under the bed until his fingers clasped around the culprit, which had called him back to the world of the living. He gave his pager a suspicious look, vaguely wondering how it had ended up under the bed in the first place, and then he slowly headed downstairs. He grabbed his coat and keys, and reached for his cane as he was about to go out the door. It wasn't there, which was strange because he could have sworn leaving it there when he had gotten home around ten the previous evening. But then again, he had been sure he had thrown his pager down the stairs before going to bed so as to be sure it wouldn't disturb him. He sighed at the prospect of turning on the lights to look for the damn thing. He had so far managed to avoid doing so; he had enough of a headache as it was. But when he flipped the switch, nothing happened. He leaned against the door tiredly, taking some of the weight off his bad leg. He closed his eyes and tried not to think about the pain. The pain in his leg, the throbbing in his head and behind his eyes from lack of sleep, and the pain deep inside that kept him bitter. House reached into his pocket and grabbed the bottle of Vicodin, deeply thankful that it had stayed where he put it. He opened the bottle, grabbed one of the pills and put it in his mouth. He tilted his head back and swallowed it, then closed his eyes as he felt it moving down his throat. He took a deep, steadier breath. The pain was being suppressed.

House glanced around his living room, hoping to spot his cane so that he wouldn't have to go groping for it in the dark. His intense blue eyes roved from the fireplace, to the piano, and into the very dark corners of the room. He surveyed the room like he would a brain MRI image, dismissing no detail as merely background interference. And there was his cane, innocently propped against the piano chair.

House smiled faintly as he limped over to retrieve it. He didn't know how it had moved on its own, but apparently it couldn't hide from him for long. The darkness didn't bother House like it would most people, maybe that was why he was such a successful doctor. Darkness was something he understood, something he could treat, and therefore it couldn't bring him down. He was faced with it all the time. Everything from drug addiction to cancer, to amputation, he'd seen it all and had personally experienced much more of it than was fair. But then again, when was life ever fair? Not even the warm light of day could brighten the darkness for House, it never had. But he understood it, and that was why he was one of the best doctors in that hospital. It was as if he had lived with a disease for so long that it didn't have any new tricks for him. Over time he had learned to use it to his advantage, to save others from the disease before they lost sight of the light like he had. Besides, it was all he had. He wasn't married, he had few friends, and he couldn't even go jogging like normal people. His job had put meaning into his life, given him worth, and if he lost that one purpose, the disease would have him beaten.

But anyone who could claim they knew House could also tell you that he was not an easily beaten man. So with cane in hand, Gregory house stepped out into the desolate night.

When the icy gust of wind hit him, that's when House was sure something was wrong. It was only mid September and the nights were still mild, so what was this? He hurried to his car, and as he drove to the hospital, it began snowing. The snow fell soft at first, but before House knew what was happening, he was driving in the middle of a horrible blizzard. He could barely see the roads, but somehow managed to make it to the hospital anyway. He figured it was because he had taken the route so many times, he could have done it in his sleep. After parking his car in the underground parking lot and dusting the snow from the hood, he headed up to the hospital. But there was a growing feeling of unease in the pit of his stomach, as if he knew the worst was coming.

House walked through the front doors into a deathly silent hospital. He was alone, the only one there, standing in the middle of the foyer. The fluorescent lights of the hospital were much too bright for such a late hour and the air was unusually stagnant, and quiet. Where were the midnight shift nurses? Where were the patients bedded in the halls? This was all wrong.

House slowly got on the elevator and headed up to the next floor. There had to be someone here, he reasoned. If not, then who had paged him?

He got off the elevator, greeted by yet another unearthly silent floor of the hospital. He slowly made his way down the hall, peeking in every room as he went, but all the beds were empty. The sound of his uneven footfalls was the only thing that broke the suffocating silence. Then at the end of the hall, House saw an open door. Bright light poured out of the room into the already bright hallway, and he could see the shadow of a figure standing just within the door.

House hurried to the room and was greeted at the door by Cuddy and her look of disapproval. Silence ensued, but then Cuddy spoke.

"Your patient is waiting for you."

House held her eyes for as long as he could before forcing himself to face the room. He didn't want to look, because he knew he didn't want to see what awaited him. But now that he saw it, he couldn't look away.

There under the white lights was Stacy. For she was the only one he could see in that moment. Her eyes were intense and beautiful, and her hair was like black silk, flowing around her shoulders. Her face was pale, and House recognized the pain and grief in her eyes, and chills ran down his spine. She was so beautiful… She was looking right into his eyes, right into his soul, and he couldn't hide anything from her.

But the world refused to turn only for them, and the moment was soon lost to the past. Stacy was the one to break the gaze. She instead turned her eyes to Mark, her husband, who sat in his wheelchair by her side. Stacy leaned down and kissed him softly, and when she pulled away she was smiling.

"You have to help him," she said, not even looking away from Mark. "There is no one else who can."

House stared at the floor. Hadn't he helped this man enough? If Mark was dying again, then by all means, let him die. Maybe he was destined to die in that wheelchair, and who was he to stand in the way of destiny?

But he could feel Stacy's eyes boring into him, waiting for him to say something. He glanced up at her. Her eyes were pleading, needing this. He couldn't ignore that. She needed his help, so he would help, but nothing could stop him from hating every moment of it.

He nodded, then popped a couple more Vicodin as he made his way over to Mark.

"It's his right leg, its turning black," Stacy spoke softly, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

House bluntly pulled the blanket from Mark's lap, revealing the leg. It appeared as if it had been severely bruised, and had the distinct odor of something rotting. House knelt down to examine it more carefully, but it only confirmed to him what he had known the minute he removed the blanket.

"Mark's leg is dead," he said softly. He couldn't look up at Stacy, so he just kept talking, as if to fill the silence. "If this had been caught sooner, then maybe it could have been treated, but it's too late for that now. The leg will have to be amputated before it causes more problems. I will schedule the procedure for…"

"Greg," Stacy spoke, cutting him off, not a hint of grief in her voice.  
House looked up at her, caught off guard by all the malice she put into that single word.

"It was amputated."

House could feel his heart rate quicken.

"We had to do it."

House's mouth hung open slightly as he stared up at her, she couldn't be talking about what he thought she was talking about, could she?

"I told you I was sorry."

House slowly turned to face Mark again, but the more Stacy said, the more he feared what he would see.

"But my decision saved your life."

House stared at the place where Mark's leg had once been. But he knew it was no longer Mark sitting in that wheelchair.

Then her voice changed, became crueler, colder, and was somehow not her own voice anymore.

"This is your destiny, to live and die bound to this wheelchair. To die alone, defeated by the disease. To die an old man, when all you can remember is the darkness, and for you, that's all there is."

House looked up, and kneeling in front of the wheelchair like a slave kneeling before his master, he looked into his own eyes and saw that there was nothing left. No joy, no hope, not even awareness, for he simply stared into the distance unseeingly.

"Everything you think you've known since we put you into a coma has been nothing but a dream. You are still lying in that hospital bed, and there is no one by your side. Soon you shall awaken from your coma, and I will be gone. I had to leave, because I know you can never forgive me for saving your life"

Then there was a blinding flash of light and House found himself in the wheelchair. Despair gripped him so fast he shuddered.

"My leg." he whispered as he looked down and saw that it was gone. "No…"

House opened his eyes and was wide-awake. His breathing was shaky and beads of sweat had formed on his brow. But when he saw that he was lying under his own ceiling in his own room, he sighed in relief and his breathing steadied. He bent his right leg up until pain came shooting through it. He smiled through the pain and held his leg, and for once he wasn't angry at the damned thing. He propped himself up on one elbow and checked the bedside clock radio. It was four thirty in the morning.

He lay there for a few moments thinking about the strange dream he had just had. Actually, he thought, it was more of a nightmare.

Strange, he never had nightmares. Usually he dreamed about things like Cuddy sending him strippers, or Angelina Jolie suddenly showing up in his office with nothing on but a thong. The thought sent him into another daydream and soon he had fallen asleep.


End file.
